
















'^0^ 







o 











^^^R ^, . 



TRENTON FALLS, 



PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE 



EDITED B-i 



K PARKE K WILLIS 



^BRACING THE ORIOINAL ESSAY OF 



JOHN SHERMAN, 



THE K I II S T P R O P R I K T O R AND RESIDENT 



THK I'RINCII'AI, ILLLSTRATIONS FROM ORIGINAL DESIGNS BY 



HEINE, KUMMER AND MULLER. 




FNGEA-VED ON tVOOD 



NetD g0rk: 

PDBI.TSnED FOR THE PROPRIETOR BT 

GEORGE P. PUTNAM, 

15 5 BROADWAY. 

1851. 



Entered according to Act of Confess, in the year 1851, 

By M. MOORE, 

In the Cleik's Office of the District Couit of tlie United States for th 

Southern District of New York. 



.\n 



^N'V 



STKRK0T7PED B? 

EICHARD C. VALENTIN?:, 
New York. 

F. C. GUTIERREZ, Printer, 
Corner of Jolin auid Dutch strec 



(2jy'^@. 



a^^.. 



<>^'^-~ 





H E most eiijoi/ahhj 
beautiful ^pot, among ' \^ 
the resorts of roman- \ ' ' '' 
tic scenery in ftur country, is 
the one which is the subject of 
the present httle book. To the 
writer, as to most other lovers of 
Nature who have visited it, the 
remembrance of its lovehness has 
become the bright spot to which 
dream and revery oftenest return. It seems to be 
curiously adapted to enjoy; being, somehow, not 



4 TRENTON FALLS 

only the kind, but the size of a place which the 
(after all) measurable arms of a mortal heart can 
enfold in its embrace, Niagara is too much — as a 
roasted ox is a thing to go to look at, though one 
retires to dine on something smaller. 

Trenton Falls is the place, above all others, where 
it is a luxury to stay — which one oftenest revisits — 
which one most commends strangers to be sure to 

o 

see. The writer, whose name is on the title-page, 
having written much, at different times, about it, has 
been induced by his friend, Mr. Moore, the proprie- 
tor, to join with three admirable artists in putting 
together what pen and pencil have recorded of its 
beauty. The object of the book is as much to re- 
mind the pubhc of what is within easy access and 
worth their while to know of and frequent, as to 
embody a convenient guide and companion in which 
the visitor shall find directions for his feet and sym- 
pathy for his heart. 

The first thing wanted, of course, is information as 
to locality, accessibility, situation of the vai-ious points 
of interest, and accommodation to travellers. These 
items have been recorded in a descriptive essay by a 
man whose memory should be cherished amid the 
admiration given to the Falls ; for it is to his discov- 



I L L U S '1 R A T E D . 5 

ery and appreciation of the spot, bis enterprise in 
getting possession of it, and his perseverance in draw- 
ing attention to its beauties and providing accommo- 
dation for visitors, tbat tlie public owe their enjoy- 
ment of it. We speak of John Sherman, grandson 
of Roger Sherman, one of the signers of the Decla- 
ration of Independence, and father of Mrs. Moore, 
the wife of the present proprietor of the Falls. 

As a matter of history, we may remark " en pas- 
sant,'' that the village of Trenton was formerly known 
as Oldenbarneveld,* thus named by Col. Boon, 
one of the first settlers of this part of our State, and 
the agent of the Holland Company prior to the 
nineteenth century. The Indian appellation, Kauy- 
a-hoo-ra, literally " leajmic/ ivater'' is only remem- 
bered by few, and ere many years this beautiful and 
descriptive name will be lost. To show the careless 
change of nomenclature, which has for many years 
been going on in our country, we may be pardoned 
for giving that of the metamorphosis of Oldenbarne- 
veld. The principal business man of the village, 

* From John OLDENBAR>fEVELT, Grand Pensioner of the 
State of Holland, in the 17th century, who was beheaded for 
his being too favorable to religious toleration, and a friend to 
peace ; and in the name is an intimation of their (the Dutch 
gentlemen who laid it out) respect for liberty of conscience. 



6 TRENTON FALLS 

some twenty or thiity years since, took the notion 
that '• OldenharneveJd'' was too long an item to head 
his letters or bills with ; so he got up a petition to 
change it, had it signed by three or four individuals, 
sent it on to Washington — and the thing was done. 
Thus a name was adopted already well known as 
the capital of New Jersey, and some other twenty or 
thirty villages and towns in the United States. The 
consequence of course is, that even at this day, let- 
ters frequently miscarr}^, unless directed, " Oneida 
County, N. Y." But to return. 

Mr. Sherman, after graduating at Yale College in 
1*793, settled in Mansfield, Conn., having been or- 
dained a minister of the Congregational denomina- 
tion ; he there became pastor of a large congrega- 
tion, and was universally beloved and respected ; 
but about the year 1805, having preached doctrines 
rather too liberal to suit the minds of a small part 
of his flock, he resigned his charge. About this 
time, having received an invitation from Col. Mappa 
and Judge Vanderkemp, who with their families had 
formed a small society of Unitarians at Oldenbarne- 
veld, he visited that place for the first time, remain- 
ing several weeks, and preaching very acceptably to 
them. It was during his sojourn at Oldenbarneveld, 



ILLUSTRATED, 7 

that Mr. Sherman mad« his first visit to the ravine 
of the Kauy-a-hoo-ra. 

From the village to the Falls was an unbroken 
wood ; there were two ways of approach, the one 
where the grist and saw mills are (the village of 
Trenton Falls now), the other at the summit level of 
the High Falls. The latter was taken, the least 
preferable of the two in point of view. The path 
was what Nature had formed : the foothold, at the 
period of Mr. Sherman's first visit, being of the most 
precarious kind, and attended with absolute danger ; 
but difficulty and danger were unthought of by him, 
and the greatest treat of his life was before him. 
Words would only be an apology for the impression 
of the scene on his mind, he never dreaming there 
was such an unique display of Nature so absolutely 
unknown, and yet so near the habitation of man. 
Again and again he revisited the wild ravine, oft re- 
marking, *' that it must eventually become one of 
the great features of our continent." Little did he 
then imagine, that through his instrumentality it 
would in a few years so become. 

Mr. Sherman returned to his home at Mansfield, 
and shortly after received a pressing call from the 
Society at Oldenbarneveld to become their spiritual 



8 TRENTON FALLS 

guide. He accepted the invitation, and on the 9t]i 
of March, 1806, was installed pastor of the first 
Unitarian Church in the State of New York. It 
was, perhaps, fortunate that such a man was the 
apostle of what was then a new and unsatisfactory 
doctrine to most of the inhabitants of the village and 
its vicinity, for, from his blameless life and urbane 
character, he outlived all prejudice. 

Mr. Sherman was an eloquent and able orator and 
sound scholar, a profound logician, and known as 
the author of the "Philosophy of Language Illus- 
trated," and of several works on Biblical history, 
&c. &c. 

At the time he became their pastor, his church 
was composed of fourteen members ; but in a short 
time the congregation was so increased that the 
present spacious church was erected, which has 
since continued to prosper as under the auspices of 
the first pastor, — at the present time numbering by 
hundreds what was originally less than a score, 

Mr. Sherman, to provide more comfortably for a 
largely increasing family, subsequently established 
an Academy near Oldenbarneveld, which was soon 
in a flourishing condition, and over which he pre- 
sided for many years with high scholarship and 



ILLUSTRATED. 



ability; and in 1822 (still clinging to liis old remi- 
niscences), caused a house to be built at the Falls, 
for the accommodation of visitors, which he called 
the " Rural Resort," 



-^;>:^ ^ 




the entire receipts of which, for the first season, 
amounted to $181 j%\. In 1823 he removed thither 
with his family, and in 1825 a large addition was 



10 TRENTON FALLS 

made to the conveniences of the place, — Phihp 
Hone, of the city of New York, his personal friend, 
fui'nishing a loan for that purpose. The first visitors 
who slept in that house were our well-known citi- 
zens Philip Hone and the late Dominick Lynch. 

The remaining years of Mr. Sherman were passed 
at the "Rural Resort,'" where, as the agreeable and 
intelligent host, the scholar and friendly gentleman, 
he charmed and pleased the intellectual traveller 
and worshipper of the sublimest works of the Crea- 
tor. These, however, had been rendered much more 
accessible by his efforts. The visitor of the present 
day can scarcely imagine the almost impracticable 
difficulty of the earlier attempt ; for from the year 
1822 until the present time, every season has been 
devoted to the task of improving the pathway — tons 
of rock at a time having been blasted by the suc- 
cessful efforts of the miner — so, that the fortunate 
traveller of our day can survey, in perfect security, 
the various jDoints of scenery. 

Mr. Sherman died on the 2d day of August, 1828, 
in the fifty- seventh year of his age, and was buried, 
at his special request, on the grounds he so much 
loved, within the sound of the loud anthem of the rag- 
ing Kauy-a-hoo-ra, and in the view of the Hostelrie 



ILLUSTRATED. 



11 



he had founded. The traveller, casting his eye to 
the northward of the hotel, may observe, on the 
summit of a conical hill, an inclosed space beautifully 
shaded. There rests what remains, earthly, of John 
Sherman. 




12 TRENTON FALL 




E should precede Mr. Sherman's 
account of the Falls, perhaps 
(since it was written as far back as 1827), 
r'-l^y^ with a brief mention of the present im- 
provements in access and accommodation. 
Within the last year, Mr. Moore has made very 
large additions to the building, and the hotel now 
has a front of one hundred and thirty- six feet, a 
piazza twelve feet wide, a dining-room sixty feet by 
thirty ; large suites of apartments, sleeping-rooms 
well ventilated, and, in fact, all the luxuries of a 
first-class hotel at a " Watering Place." A plank 
road has been laid from Utica hither, over which 
the travel is about two hours. Mr. Moore has been 
at great trouble and expense in building stairways, 
and making arrangements for greater convenience 
and security in visiting the wild chasms of the tor- 
rent ; and there is at present neither danger nor 
over-fatigue in seeing all that the place has to show 
of grand and beautiful. For long visits, which 
Trenton Falls particularly invite, the hotel will be 




I-: :, '■ 'I 



I L L L) S T R A T E D . 



13 



found a delightful home ; and for these Mr. Moore 
makes the usual accommodations. 

We here present a view of the Village Fall, as 
seen from the opposite bank of the river, a short 
distance below the hotel, and then proceed to give 
(as written by Mr. Sherman in 1827) the following 




f^' 




'f^^ ^A \ K" -^ HIS superb scenery of Nature, to 
i^^r" which thousands now annually re- 
s' sort — a scenery altogether unique 
in its character, as combining at once 
the beautiful, the romantic, and the magnifi- 
ecnt — all that variety of rocky chasms, cata- 
racts, cascades, rapids, tfec, elsewhere separately ex- 
hibited in different regions — was, until within five 
years, not accessible without extreme peril and toil, 
and therefore not generally known. It is in latitude 
43'^ 23'; 14 miles north of the flourishing city of 
Utica, the great thoroughfare of this region, situated 



14 TRENTON FALLS 

on a gentle ascent from the bank of the Mohawk, 
amidst a charmmg and most fertile country. Here 
every facility can be had for a ride to Trenton 
Falls, where a house of entertainment is erected, 
near the bank of the West Canada Creek, for the 
accommodation of visitors, and where they can 
tarry any length of time which may suit their con- 
venience. 

This creek is the main branch of the Mohawk 
River, as the Missouri is of the Mississippi, having 
lost its proper name because not so early explored. 
It interlocks on the summit elevation with the Black 
River, the distance being only three -fourths of a 
mile, where the waters of the one may be easily 
turned into the other. It has chosen its course 
along the highlands, making its way on the back- 
bone of the country, and empties into the Mohawk 
at Herkimer. 

The " Rural Resort," or house of entertainment 
at the Falls, which is at the end of the road, and in- 
closed on three sides by the native forest, opens sud- 
denly to view upon elevated ground, at the distance 
of a mile in a direct line of the road. From the 
door-yard you step at once into the forest, and, 
walking only twenty rods, strike the bank at the 



ILLUSTRATED. 15 

place of descent. This is about one hundred feet of 
nearly perpendicular rock, made easy and safe by 
five pair of stairs with railings. You land upon a 
broad pavement, level with the water's edge, a fu- 
rious rapid being in front, that has cut down the 
rock still deeper, and which, at one place, in times 
of drought, does not exceed ten feet in width ; but 
in spring and foil floods, or after heavy rain, becomes 
a tremendously foaming torrent, rising from fifteen 
to twenty feet, and sweeping the lowest flight of 
stairs. Being now on the pavement, the river at 
your feet, perpendicular walls of solfd rock on each 
side, and the narrow zone of ethereal sky far over- 
head, your feelings are at once excited. You have 
passed to a subterranean world. The first impres- 
sion is astonishment at the change. But recovering 
instantly, your attention is forthwith attracted to 
the magnificence, the grandeur, the beauty, and 
sublimity of the scene. You stand and pause. You 
behold the operations of incalculable ages. You 
are thrown back to antediluvian times. The ada- 
mant rock has yielded to the flowing water, which 
has formed the wonderful chasm. You tread on 
petrifactions, or fossil organic remains, imbedded 
in the four-hundredth stratum, which preserve the 



16 



TRENTON FALLS 



form, and occupy the place, of beings once animated 
like yourselves, eacli stratum having been the de- 
posit of a supervening flood, that happened succes- 
sively, Eternity alone knows when. 

At this station is a view of the outlet of the 
chasm, forty-five rods below, and also of what is 
styled the first fall, thirty-seven rods up the stream. 




The parapet of this fall, visible from the foot of the 
stairs, is, in dry time, a naked perpendicular rock 



ILLUSTRATED. 17 

thirty-three feet high, apparently extending quite 
across the chasm, the water retiring to the left, and 
being hid from the eye by intervening prominences. 
But in freshets, or after heavy rains, it pours over 
from the one side of the chasm to the other in a 
proud amber sheet. A pathway to this has been 
blasted, at a considerable expense, under an over- 
hanging rock, and around an extensive projection, 
directly beneath which rages and roars a most vio- 
lent rapid. Here some, unaccustomed to such bold 
scenery, have been intimidated, and a few have 
turned back. But the passage is level, with a rocky 
Avail to lean against, and rendered perfectly safe at 
the turn of the projection by chains well riveted in 
the side. 

In the midway of this projection, five tons were 
thrown off by a fortunate blast, affording a perfectly 
level and broad space, where fifteen or twenty may 
stand together and take a commanding view of the 
whole scenery. A little to the left the rapid com- 
mences its wild career. Directly underneath, it 
rages, foams, and roars, driving with resistless fury, 
and forcing a tortuous passage into the expanded 
stream on the right. In front is a projection from 
the other side, curved to a concavity of a semicircle 



18 TRENTON FALLS 

by the impetuous waters. The top of this opponent 
projection has been swept away, and is entirely flat ; 
exhibiting, from its surface downwards, the separate 
strata as regular, as distinct, and as horizontal as the 
mason- work in the locks of the grand canal. Here, 
in old time, w^as a lofty fall, now reduced to the 
rapid just described. 

Passing hence on a level of twenty feet above the 
stream, we witness the amazing power of the wa- 
ters in the spring and autumnal freshets. Massive 
slabs of rock he piled in the middle of the river, 
thrown over the falls above, weighing from ten to 
twenty tons. These are occasionally swept on 
through the rapids, and floated over the five-feet 
falls at the outlet of the chasm. Such is their mo- 
mentum, that every bound upon the bottom causes 
a vibration at the Rural Resort, and their stifled 
thunder, amid the agitated roar of waters, is some- 
times very distinctly heard. 

A few rods above this pile of rocks we pass to the 
left, and suddenly come in full view of the descend- 
ing cataract, which is known as the Sherman Fall. 
It has formed an immense excavation, having thrown 
out thousands of tons from the parapet rock visible 
at the stairs, and is annually forcing off' slabs from 



ILLUSTRATED. 19 

the west corner, against which it incessantly pours 
a section of its powerful sheet. 

It is difficult to give a description of the scenery 
here. A mass of naked rock, extending up one 
hundred and fifty feet to the summit of the bank, 
juts forward with threatening aspect. The visitor 
ascends by natural steps to the throat of its yawn- 
ing, and, like a son of Hercules, literally shoulders 
the mountain above. Here he stands free from the 
spray, in a direct line of the parapet wall, survey- 
inof at leisure the everg-reens which cover in contrast 
the opponent bank with a rich foliage of the deepest 
verdure, and immediately at his feet the operation 
of the cataract rushing down into the spacious ex- 
cavation it has formed. Back of this thick amber 
sheet, the reaction of the water has worn away the 
rock to an exact circular curve, eight or ten feet in 
diameter, which exhibits a furiously boiling cauldron 
of the very whitest foam. In the bosom of the ex- 
cavation a Fairy makes her appearance at a certain 
hour of sunshine, and dances through the mist, 
modestly retiring as the visitor changes his position, 
and blushing all colors when she finds him gazing 
at her irised beauties. A few rods beyond this spot 
a thin shelf puts out from the mountain, under 



20 TRENTON FALLS 

which it never rains, nor snows, nor shines. In 
front the river hastens smoothly and rapidly to the 
fall below. 

Leaving this rocky shelf we pass a furious wind- 
ing rapid, which, encroaching on the path, drives 
the visitor close under a low projecting cliff that 
compels him to stoop, and seems to demand homage 
as a prerequisite of admission to the splendid scenery 
just beyond. Here all ages and sexes bow, who 
would pass from the portico into the grand temple 
of nature's magnificence, to witness the display of 
her sublimer glories. 

This service performed, there opens upon us, 
when the water is low, an expansion of flat rock, 
where we are suddenly transported with a full view 
of the High Falls, forty rods beyond. The eye, 
elevated at a considerable angle, beholds a perpen- 
dicular rock one hundred feet high, extending across 
the opening in a diagonal line from the mountainous 
walls on each side rising seventy or eighty feet still 
higher. Over this the whole river descends, first 
perpendicularly about forty feet, the main body 
rushing to the left. On the right it pours down in 
a beautiful white sheet. For a short distance in 
the middle the rock is left entirely naked, exhibiting 



ILLUSTRATED. 21 

a perpendicular and bold breastwork, as though 
reared by art to divide the beautiful white sheet on 
the one side from the overwhelming fury of the 
waters on the other. They unite on a flat below ; 
then, with a tumultuous foam, veer suddenly down 
an inclination of rocky steps, whence the whole river 
is precipitated into a wide, deep, and dark basin, 
forty feet underneath — mountainous walls rising on 
each side of the stream nearly two hundred feet — 
tall hemlocks and bendino- cedars extendinc^ their 
branches on the verge above — small shrubbery va- 
riegating here and there their stupendous and naked 
sides. On the rio-ht of the basin a charmino- verdure 
entirely overspreads a smoothly rounding and ma- 
jestic prominence, which reaches half way up the 
towering summit, and over the whole sky mmgles 
with retiring evergreens, until verging in perspective 
to the distant angle of incidence, they are lost in the 
ethereal expanse beyond. 

Such are the High Falls, which the pen may 
faintly describe, and of which the pencil may por- 
tray the outline, but Nature reserves to herself the 
prerogative of giving to her visitors the rapturous 
impression. 

The view of these falls varies exceedingly, accord- 



22 TRENTON FALLS 

ing to the plenitude or paucity of the waters. In 
the autumnal floods, and particularly the spring 
freshets, arising from the sudden liquefaction of 
snow in the northern country, the river is swelled a 
hundred-fold, and comes rushing in a vast body of 
tumultuous foam from the summit rock into the 
broad basin at the bottom. It is at this time tre- 
mendous indeed, and overpowers man's feeble frame 
with the paralyzing impression of Omnipotence. 
On these occasions the solid foundations of the earth 
are ripped up, and enormous slabs of rock are float- 
ed off", or deposited in piles to the right or left of 
the all-controlling current. We have in effect the 
peerless majesty, the awful power, and the deep vol- 
leying thunder of the grand cataract of Niagara, which 
causes the heavens to shake and the earth to trem- 
ble ; which forces the son of pride to feel himself 
mere insio-nificance on the vero-e of annihilation ; and 
proclaims, in his astounded ears, what is meant by 
the existence, and what it is to stand before the 
throne of that Infinite Supreme, who can make such 
an appalling display upon a comparatively single 
atom of the universe ! 

Passing ujd at the side we mount a grand level 
on the top, where in dr}^ times the stream retires to 




iL '4- 



ILLUSTRATED. 23 

the right, and opens a wide pavement for a large 
party to walk abreast. Here a flight of stairs leads 
up to a house of refreshment, styled the Rural Re- 
treat, twenty feet above the summit of the high 
falls, and in a direct line with them — a house thirty 
by sixteen, with a well furnished bar, and also a 
room for gentlemen and ladies, encircled and shaded 
by hemlocks and cedars, from the front platform and 
windows of which is a full view of the inverted 
scenery of the falls, of the flat rock below, and of 
the visitors who pass upon it to survey the exhibi- 
tion above. Here the philosopher and divine may 
make their sage remarks and draw their grave con- 
clusions ; tlie weary rest from their labors, the hun- 
gry and dry recruit their exhausted spirits ; the 
sociable of all grades and nations converse freely 
and unknown together; the facetious display the 
coruscations of their wit, and the cheerful in dispo- 
sition enjoy the innocent glee of hilarity. Greece, 
embellished by immortal bards, cannot boast a spot 
so highly romantic. 

The opening of the chasm now becomes consid- 
erably enlarged, and a new style of scenery com- 
mences. Forty rods beyond this is what is usually 
denominated the Mill-Dam Fall, fourteen feet hio-li. 



24 TRENTON FALLS 

stretching its broad sheet of water from the one side to 
the other of the expanded chasm. This also is visi- 
ble throuo-h the branches of evero-reens at the Rural 
Retreat. 

Ascending- this fall, we are introduced to another 
still more expanded and extensive platform of level 
rock, fifteen rods wide at low-water, and ninety in 
length, lined on each side with cedars, which extend 
down to the walking level, whose branches all 
crowd forward imder their bending trunks, and whose 
backs are as naked as the towering rocky walls, con- 
cealed in contrast a rod or two behind them. 

This place may justly be denominated the Aliiam- 
BRA of nature. At the extremity of it is one of the 
most interestinor scenes imao-inable ; a scene that no 
pen can describe to one Avho is not on the spot, and 
where every landscape painter always drops his pen- 
cil. It is far too much for art to imitate, or for elo- 
quence to represent. It is the prerogative of ISTature 
alone to do this : she has done it once, and stands 
without a rival competitor. Here I ought to drop 
my pen. A naked rock, sixty feet high, reaches grad- 
ually forward from the mid distance its shelving top, 
from which descends a perpetual rill that forms a 
natural shower-bath. 







ml ■'-- 



ILLUSTRATED. 25 

On tlie very verge of its overhanging summit 
stands a tall cedar, whose fingered apex towers 
aloft, pointing up to the skies, and whose thick 
branches elongating gradually towards the root, 
reach far down the projecting chff with an impene- 
trable shade of deepest verdure. On the left is a 
most wild cascade, where the water rushes over the 
variously posited strata in all directions, combining 
the gentle fall and the outrageous cataract, which 
we term the Cascade of the Alhambra. 

Here the expansive opening suddenly contracts, 
and leaves a narrow aperture, through which the 
eye beholds mountainous walls retiring in various 
curvatures and projections. Directly opposite the 
spectator is a large perpendicular rock on the other 
side of the stream, at whose base the rao-ino- waters 
become still. Annexed to this is a lofty tower, 
rising in a vast column at its side, commanding, 
with imposing majesty, the scenery around. At 
your feet is a dark basin of water forty feet deep, 
resting from its labors in the wild cascade above, 
and relieved by collections of whitest foam, which 
frequently assemble within an eddy at the upper 
end, and dance to each other in fantastic forms, and, 
capped hke caliphs, pursuing the course of all hands 



26 TRENTON FALLS 

round in an eternal circle. On the right, the whole 
river descends gently down a charming plain, until 
lost amidst evergreens as it passes over the falls 
below. 

Ascending this cascade, whose thwarting, raging, 
foaming, dashing waters would seem to forbid a 
passage at its side, you are introduced to a grand 
amphitheatre unseen before, where is a towering 
rock of threatening majesty with a singular support- 
ing column, from whose impending cliff have fell 
enormous slabs of strata, sixteen or eighteen inches 
thick. Between this deposited pile and the base it 
would seem temerity to pass, lest you should be in- 
stantly crushed. This danger may be avoided by 
keeping near the water's edge. Just beyond the 
column is exhibited a natural fireplace. Here, also, 
a rill descends, a few feet below the summit shelf. 
A cedar extends down within reach its elongated 
branches from the root, by which a sailor could as 
easily ascend the bank as up the shrouds of his 
ship ; and under this shelving summit a solemnizing 
echo is generally heard, as of the dreadful roar of 
overwhelming floods rushing from on high. It is 
caused by the cascade below. 

Here the strata are composed of bivalve shells, 



ILLUSTRATED. 27 

Terebratulse and Product!, with merely a cement to 
unite them together ; among which are Orthocera- 
tites, vertebrae of Crinoidea, and forms resembling 
the snake or eel in motion, which, whether testa- 
ceous or crustaceous, I have never seen exemphfied 
or described in any oryctological publication. Three 
of these forms I once found together, radiating as- 
terially from a depressed point of junction ; but in 
attempting to extract the specimen it was entirely 
ruined. 

A few rods up the stream there is, on the oppo- 
site wall, an extraordinary interruption of the strata, 
which has very much the appearance, as to size and 
form, of a superannuated hemlock turned up by the 
roots, its trunk inclining, with a considerable angle, 
up through thirty or forty strata, and Avorn away to 
its axis. Immediately above and below, and at the 
sides of this dendriform interposition, the strata are 
all horizontal, as is the case with the whole wall, 
and also of the correspondent wall on this side of 
the creek. I can give no solution of this anomaly, 
but mention it as what may possibly be useful in the 
annals of geological science. I cannot consider it to 
be a petrifaction. 

From this, passing a high projection, we come to 



28 TRENTON FALLS 

a place where this wonderful chasm is fully demon- 
strated to be the effect of the operation of the 
stream. We see the process actually going on. 
The curvatures here, through which the water 
rushes for a considerable distance, are as regular as 
if drawn by the compass, or any method of forming 
the varieties of a curve. One of these is styled the 
Rocky Heart, from its perfect resemblance to that 
form on cards, which is so denominated. In a flat 
rock at the side, there is nearly in contact a circular 
hole, named by some the Potash Kettle, and by 
others Jacob's Well, which is five or six feet deep, 
and three or four in diameter. It is usually half 
full of stones of various sizes, worn perfectly smooth, 
and exhibiting all the varieties of curvilinear form. 
Several similar perforations exist in different parts 
of the chasm, from the size of a tumbler up to the 
potash kettle. 

The doctrine then is, that at first was deposited 
in the crack of a stratum a small pebble of granite 
or other substance, harder than the lime rock, which, 
being agitated by the water, wore a circular indent- 
ation. In this, other pebbles subsequently lodged, 
and, when overflov/ed, perforated the rock still 
deeper, and wore the indentation still wider. So 



ILLUSTRATED. 29 

on, larger and larger were from time to time depos- 
ited, until considerable-sized fragments of rock or 
stones performed the same process in floods, and at 
length opened the perforation into the current. 
Moreover, the walls above the current being every 
season penetrated an inch or more by moisture, and 
this moisture frozen in winter, become annually dis- 
integrated at the sides, which combined operation 
has pi'oduced the depth and width of the chasm as 
it now exists. 

The opening in the widest places at the top is 
about three hundred yards. Now, on supposition 
that the disintegration has been annually one inch 
on each side, it will be found, by calculation, that it 
requires between five and six thousand years of this 
process to produce the effect ; Avhich corresponds 
with sufficient exactness to the Mosaic account of 
the period in which the solid surface of the earth 
emerged from its pre- existent state. I see nothing 
here incompatible with the Mosaic history, but much 
in its confirmation. It is allowed by intelligent di- 
vines, both in Europe and America, and is, in fact, 
very plainly intimated by Moses himself, that the 
"six days" of creation denoted merely a successive 
operation of divine power upon the chaotic matter 



30 TRENTON FALLS 

of the universe, for the production of its present 
organization or relatively arranged form. Having 
enumerated the several items of successive produc- 
tion, indicated by the figurative representation of 
" six days," he gives us the summary expression of 
the case, Gen. ii. 4, saying, " These are the genera- 
tions (mark the language) of the heavens and the 
earth, in the day (singular number) in which the 
Lord God made (i. e. formed or produced) the earth 
and the heavens." The pre-existent state of the 
earth he thus represents, Gen. i. 2. "And the 
earth was luithout form and void, (i. e. unorganized, 
not arranged,) and darkness was upon the face of 
the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the 
face of the waters." Now all this is perfectly phil- 
osophical, and stands uncontradicted by any geo- 
logical investigation or discovery which has been 
made. 

How long were these successive periods, and what 
was the pre-existing state of things, Moses does not 
pretend to say. They are questions of curious 
speculation, on which geologists may innocently 
hazard a conjecture. Mount Etna may have been 
a volcano in the sea, while " darkness was upon the 
fac-e of the deep," and the stratifications of primary 



ILLUSTRATED. 3I 

and secondary rocks, with the most ancient organic 
fossil forms, may have taken place when " the Spirit 
of God moved upon the face of the waters." The 
philosophy of Moses looks with pity upon all such 
stupid cavils, and spurns the aid of an advocate to 
plead its cause. Let, then, geologists go on and dive 
deep into the bowels of our earth, as the immortal 
Newton soared to the stars of heaven, and, like him, 
return with the proof, that, as an " undevout astron- 
omer," so an irreligious geologist " is mad." His 
must indeed be " a forlorn hope," who can view the 
wonderful scenery of nature in this wonderful chasm 
without correspondent emotions of reverential piety. 
It is a scene where the God of Nature himself 
preaches the most eloquent and impressive lectures 
to every visitor ; but more especially to the philoso- 
pher, whose mind is called to ascend from the won- 
derful operations of nature, to nature's more won- 
derful and incomprehensible cause ; for what is 
NATURE, but the systematic course of divine operation ? 
At the Rocky Heart it is customary to stop, see- 
ing the passage beyond is attended with some dan- 
ger, and the scenery, within the last eighty rods, is, 
to a considerable degree, characteristic of what fol- 
lows. 



S2 TRENTON FALLS 

On your return to the Rural Resort, you ascend 
the bank mimediately behind the Rural Retreat, 
where many picturesque glimpses of the river may 
be had, one particularly at Carmichael's Point, a 
view of which is annexed. Thence, carefully observ- 
ing to keep the left-hand foot-path on the summit 
near the creek, you pass through the cool shade of 
the forest, until you arrive with a good appetite at 
the place where you landed from your carriage. 

The usual dinino: hour is two o'clock. Beino; in 
the wilderness, at the end of the road, and without 
any regular market, it is impossible for such an es- 
tablishment to furnish, as in cities or villages, sepa- 
rate tables and at different times. This ouoht not 
to be expected nor required. Visitors, who wish to 
dine, should notify to the barkeeper the number of 
their party, in order that correspondent preparations 
may be made ; and if any party does not return at 
the appointed time, they cannot expect the same 
fare as "while the blessing is on." The estabhsh- 
ment is disposed to do, in all cases, what it can ; 
and it trusts that the candid and reflecting will be 
no less ready, on their part, to make all due allow- 
ance for peculiar circumstances. The best that can 
be procured in this retired location is always served 



ILLUSTRATED. 



3.3 



lip witliout the ceremony of apology. Our wishes 
never yet wrought miracles, and, consequently, we 
are not always equally w^ell prepared. The will 
must sometimes be taken for the deed. 

Among the numerous thousands who have visited 
these Falls, we are happy to say that very few in- 
stances have occurred of the least deviation from 
good behavior or politeness. We record this fact 
with pleasure, as characteristic of the dignified re- 
finement of the a(^e. 




34 



TREJSTON FALLS 





1 



LTHOUGH the passage beyond 
the Rocky Heart is, at present, 
difficult, and even dangerous, yet 
both gentlemen and ladies have 
-- frequently passed as far as Boon's Bridge* 
where is a fall of about twenty feet, and where 
the chasm commences. This is nearly three 
miles from the Rural Resort. Every one who 
would explore the whole chasm, should take 
the full day before him, which will afford him 
time to rest an hour or two at the village near the 
bridge, and recruit his strength. Considerable has 
already been done to render this passage feasible ; 
and, in all probability, it will soon be both easy and 
safe. 

It will of course be perceived, in view of what 
lias been stated concernino- the floods and rains, that 



ILLUSTRATED. 35 

the scenery must vary according as the water is 
liigli or low. The outhnes of the chasm remain 
indeed the same ; but the character and impression 
of the view are vastly different. When the water 
is very low, you have a much easier, far more spa- 
cious, and more pleasing path. At the Alhambra 
fifty may walk abreast, and hundreds may pass 
each other on the beautiful level and dry pavement 
of its saloon. You see much more of the rock and 
of the manifest operation of the w^aters in wearing- 
it away ; and the large party enjoy with more zest 
their association, as they can sit together, make 
philosophical observations, and communicate their 
mutual impressions, or range about the shelving de- 
clivities from the path to the water's edge. For a 
party of pleasure, especially those who have often 
visited the Falls, some think the time of low w^ater 
is the most eligible season. It undoubtedly has the 
advantages specified above. 

On the other hand, when the water is so high as 
barely to allow a passage, Indian file, the majesty 
and imposing grandeur, the magnificence and sub- 
limity of the scene, are proportionably heightened. 
It is quite another view. Hence it is desirable to 
witness this scenery in all its variations. 



36 



TREXTON FALLS 




At hiot-h water, which, even in midsummer, two 
daj^s' heavy rain will effect, the spray at the first, and 
also at the High Falls, is like an April shower, and 
requires the visitor to haste through its penetrating 
mist. The rapids, on such occasions, are propor- 
tionably more interesting. 

In winter, these Falls are not easily nor safely ap- 
proached, the pathw^ay being slippery, or blocked 
by snows ; Avhich would require pointed steel for the 



ILLUSTRATED. 37 

feet in the one case, and miicli exertion in the other. 
Some, however, do visit them in tlie winter ; at 
which time the view is superhitively splendid. 
From the overhanging chfFs, enormous icicles, reach- 
ing down to the pathway, become transparent col- 
onnades. The descending rills, already described, 
form an inverted tunnel, whose base is eight or ten 
feet, the apex touching the summit of the cliff sixty 
feet high, and the water pouring down through the 
centre. At the High Falls, the shrubbery in its 
environs is distended by the frozen spray, and span- 
gles and glitters in the sunbeam with inexpressible 
lustre. The reader may easily imagine the rest. 

Still different, and far more awfully solemn and 
sublime, is the scene by moonlight. At the proper 
season, the moon, betAveen the hours of ten and 
eleven, appears through the boughs and tops- of 
evergreens on the summit of the opponent bank, 
and throAvs her interrupted rays upon the foot-path. 
It is hterally the descent of ^neas to Pluto's dreary 
domain. You cannot imagine that you belonir to 
the upper world. You have departed hence. You 
are walking, like ghosts, through the chambers of 
the grave, the mausoleums of the dead, the cata- 
combs of old Time. You find yourselves in a Avorld 



3S TRENTON FALLS 

of spirits, where every thing around is the deep 
shadow of an evanescent shade. You pause, your 
feelings are solemnized ; you withliold your step. 
At length the moon towers aloft, and displays her 
full orb of mild and chastened light, which, while it 
flickers upon the raging rapids, tinging their surface 
with burnished silver, produces a mighty contrast, 
as at the awful moment of creation, when the firma- 
ment and the waters of the deep, the light and the 
darkness, were separated by omnipotent command. 
But I may not attempt to portray a scene which 
cannot be comprehended by those who live only 
upon the surface of our world. Suffice it to remark, 
that there is no more danger in passing through the 
chasm at such a season than any other. Here the 
writer has retired at midnight for contemplation, to 
familiarize himself with mortality ; and here his chil- 
dren have left behind the bustle and cares of day, 
to pay their more solemn adorations to ISTature's 
almighty and all-glorious God. 

The P-eoloo-ical order of these rocks is pronounced 
by Professor Eaton and Professor Renwick to be 
transition, the first that contains fossil organic re- 
mains. Their character, in the lower part of the 
chasm, is the compact fetid carbonate of lime. The 



ILLUSTRATED. 



39 




color is a very dark blue, and the rock is extremely 
hard and brittle. It is unsuitable for mortar, unless 
broken into small pieces previous to calcination. 
Some strata are more or less interspersed with sili- 
cious particles, which give, with steel, the igneous 
spark. At the High Falls, and so on to the Rocky- 
Heart, the upper strata are from a foot to eighteen 
inches thick ; are composed of crystallized fragments 
of the vertebrse of Crinoidea, and of the shells of 
Terebratulse, which make excellent lime for plaster- 
ing. Now and then a stratum of this character is 
found a hundred feet below the surface. There is 
a singular instance of this at the first projection, in 
a very thick stratum, the upper half of which is the 



40 TRENTON FALLS 

compact blue fetid, without any seam or mark of 
stratification between. 

In general, the strata through the chasm are re- 
markably horizontal, from one to eighteen inches 
thick. At Boon's Bridge, they dip to the south 
fifteen or twenty degrees. At the High Falls is a 
very irregular mass, which has no other character 
than disorder, in the midst of which lies horizontally 
a curious specimen of semicircular strata of the 
usual thickness, the one within the other, and the 
diameter of the outside about two feet. 

The strata in this chasm are ver}^ distinct, the 
whole distance up the walls being separated by a 
fine substance which disintegrates on exposure to 
the air and moisture. In the rocks newly blasted 
this distinction is scarcely discernible. 

From the summit to the bottom of the chasm 
small cracks or seams extend down perpendicularly, 
and in a perfectly straight line through the whole 
mass across the creek. These cracks divide the 
pavements into rhomboidal slabs, between which 
pebbles are first inserted, gradually separating one 
stratum from another, and thus preparing the slabs 
to be upturned and carried off by freshets. Some 
of the cracks separate the whole mass of rock, and 



L L U S T R A T E D . 



41 



the opening widens with the depth. These are filled 
with the calcspar, from one-tenth of an inch to tAvo 
inches thick. In the middle of the calcspar there is 
a dark line, which shows that the crj'-stallization has 
been equally formed on each side. Calcspar is also 
found in a horizontal sheet, separating the superin- 
cumbent from the stratum underneath. Conse- 
quently, these sheets of calcspar cut each other. 
But whether the horizontal sheets extend through 
the whole njass, it is impossible to ascertain. 




These rocks abound in petrifactions, or what are 
styled fossil organic remains. They are sometimes 
cut by the cracks or seams above mentioned. These 
cracks must, of course, have been subsequent to the 
petrifaction of the fossil forms ; and, indeed, sub- 



42 TRENTON FALLS 

sequent to the completion of the whole mass of 
strata. 

It would be useless to go into a detail of all the 
different genera and species of the fossils here, see- 
ing the investigations of Or^-ctologists have resulted 
in this, that the same order and character of rocl£ 
throughout the world contains the very same organic 
remains. 

The most interesting petrifaction in this locality 
is the large Trilobite ; entire specimens of which 
(for their extraction entire is extremely difficult) 
have, so far as I know, been nowhere else obtained, 
either in Europe or America. Its generic name, 
first given by Dr. Dekay, of New York, is the 
" Isotelas Gir/as.'" It is minutely described by this 
distinguished naturalist, from specimens which I 
exhibited to the Lyceum in that city. To his de- 
scription, published in the sixth number of the An- 
nals of the Lyceum, may be added, that seeing the 
dorsal slips, or of the lobes, terminate at the side 
like Indian paddles, the animal could swim ; and 
these slips being not only movable, but crustaceous, 
it could also crawl on the bottom of the sea. Here 
are small Trilobites of different genus : Ortho- 
ceratites, both large and small, of different genera 



I L L U .5 T R A T E D . 



43 




and species ; Favosites, Nautili, TerebratulcE, Pro- 
ducti, Lingula, Mitiloidea, Cornu Ammonis, Crinoi- 
dea, Connularia Quadrisulcata, and several others, 
both univalves and bivalves. Some Orthoceratites 
of the simplest form (i. e. real straight horns, perfect 
cones ; the shell, from the middle to the point, hollow 
or vacant in all its chambers) are pyritous ; some 
filled (in the hollow part) with calcspar and quartz 
crystals in contact ; some of the quartz crystals con- 
taining graphite ; the crystallized spar is white, black, 
yellow, smoky brown ; and the crystals of these dif- 
ferent colors are sometimes found in the same speci- 
men. 

I have hazarded to several the novel conjecture, 
that the Favosite (found here in the greatest abun- 
dance, from one-eighth of an inch to six inches in 
diameter at the base, and from two to nine super- 
structures, some containino- six or eio-ht hundred 



41 TRENTON FALL 1 



// 



\? 



-i 



'^M^iMMm 



U" 



thousand columns) is a miniature exemplification of 
Columnar Basaltes at the Giant's Causeway, and 
other places ; which, if my conjecture is correct, 
must have been the production of a gigantic order 
of marine antediluvian (not to say antimundane) 
Polypi. Whether the substance which composes 
these columnar forms is lime, silex, basalt, or other 
substance, so exactly do they correspond to each 
other in their prominent but very singular peculiari- 
ties, that I am unable to doubt it. There is one 
single point only in which I have not had opportu- 
nity to make a comparison, viz. : as to the circular 
perforations in the parities of the cell, by which the 
mass Ibecame one connected system. I am not ad- 
vised whether any such thing has been observed in 
Columnar Basaltes, i. e., in the prism, or space of 
column hehvecn the articulations. The hollow spe- 



LLUSTRATED, 



45 



cimens, or the weather-worn summits, are those 
alone where we are authorized to expect this dem- 
onstration, and where, in view of the entire corre- 
spondence in every particular, I have no doubt it 
can and will be found. It Avould be a miracle in 
nature that there should be a perfect correspondence 
in twenty particulars, and yet a failure in the last. 
The Basaltic columns must, of course, be mammoth 
Favosites. 

The most pleasant time of the day to visit these 
Falls is after dinner, about four o'clock, when the 
bank on the left casts its shade over the path, and 
shields from the sun's scorching rays. But this 
time can be taken only by those who do not leave 
the place the same day ; and the remark does not 
apply when it is cloudy weather. 

There is quite a variety of flowers and botanical 
specimens upon the bank ; and the rock in the 
chasm, all along up the High Falls, abounds with the 
beautiful blue hare-bell of Scotland. 

Trout were formerly very abundant in this creek, 
but have now become exceedingly scarce ; so that 
there is very little encouragement for the fishing 
party. Eels, in the forepart of the season, are still 
abundant. The ocean does not produce better. 



46 TRE N TO X FALLS 

They often weigh from tAvo to four pounds, and 
more deheious were never served up at the table of 
an epicure. 

Game, also, is scarce. In some seasons, however, 
partridges, snipes, wild ducks, the large grdy and 
black squirrel, the woodcock, and the rabbit may be 
taken. 

ISTo venomous snakes haunt this neighborhood, 
nor any beasts of prey. The deer sometimes come 
from the north to ^isit these Falls, and occasionally 
the moose ; but neither bears, nor wolves, nor cata- 
mounts ever make their appearance. 

Ladies should, by all means, come furnished with 
calf-skin shoes or bootees. Let them not 
forget this. They not only owe it to ^ 

their health, but the best pair of cloth 
shoes will be ruined by a single 
tramp over these rocks. 




^ \^4 - 



ILLUSTRATED. 



47 



^is£itfiii$ 





N a story called " Edith Lixs^.y," 
written soon after the author left Col- 
lege, occurs the following description 
of Trenton Falls : 
Trenton Falls is rather a misnomer. I 
scarcely know what you would call it ; but 
the wonder of nature which bears the name is a tre- 
mendous torrent, whose bed, for several miles, is 
sunk fathoms deep into the earth— a roaring and 
dashing stream, so far below the surface of the for- 
est in which it is lost, that you would think, as you 
come suddenly upon the edge of its long precipice, 
that it was a river in some inner world, (coiled 
within ours, as we in the outer circle of the firma- 
ment,) and laid open by some Titanic throe that had 
cracked clear asunder the crust of this "shallow 



48 TRENTON FALLS 

earth." The idea is rather assisted if you happen 
to see below you, on its abysmal shore, a party of 
adventurous travellers ; for, at that vast depth, and 
in contrast with the gigantic trees and rocks, the 
same number of well-shaped pismires, dressed in the 
last fashions, and philandering upon your parlor 
floor, would be about of their apparent size and 
distinctness. 

They showed me at Eleusis the well by which 
Proserpine ascends to the regions of day on her an- 
nual visit to the plains of Thessal}- — but with the 
genius loci at my elbow in the shape of a Greek girl 
as lovely as Phryne, my memory reverted to the 
bared axle of the earth in the bed of this American 
river, and I was persuaded, (looking the v.hile at 
the feroniere of gold sequins on the Phidian fore- 
head of my Katinka,) that supposing Hades in the 
centre of the earth, you are nearer to it, by some 
fathoms, at Trenton. I confess I have had, since 
my first descent into those depths, an uncomforta- 
ble doubt of the solidity of the globe — how the 
dense it can hold together with such a crack in its 
botto.Ti ! 

It was a night to play Endymion, or do any Tom- 
foolery that could be laid to the charge of the moon, 



ILLUSTRATED. 49 

for a more omnipresent and radiant atmosphere of 
moonlight never sprinkled the wilderness with sil- 
ver. It was a night in which to wish it might never 
be day again — a night to be ' enamored of the stars, 
and bid God bless them like human creatm^es on 
their bright journey — a night to love in, to dissolve 
in — to do every thing but what night is made for — 
sleep ! Oh heaven ! when I think how precious is 
life in such moments ; how the aroma — the celestial 
bloom and flower of the soul — the yearning and 
fast-perishing enthusiasm of youth — waste them- 
selves in the solitude of such nights on the senseless 
and unanswering air ; when I wander alone, unlov- 
ino- and unloved, beneath influences that could in- 
spire me w^ith the elevation of a seraph, were I at 
the ear of a human creature that could summon 
forth and measure my limitless capacity of devotion 
— when I think this, and feel this, and so waste my 
existence in vain yearnings — I could extinguish the 
divine spark within me like a lamp on an unvisited 
shrine, and thank Heaven for an assimilation to the 
animals I walk among ! And that is the substance 
of a speech I made to Job as a sequitur of a well- 
meant remark of his own, that "it was a pity Edith 
Linsey was not there." He took the clause about 



50 TRENTON FALLS 

the " animals" to himself, and I made an apology 
for the same a year after. We sometimes give our 
friends, quite innocently, such terrible knocks in our 
rhapsodies ! 

Most people talk of the suhliraity of Trenton, but 
I have haunted it by the week together for its mere 
loveliness. The river, in the heart of that fearful 
chasm, is the most varied and beautiful assemblage 
of the thousand forms and shapes of running water 
that I know in the world. The soil and the deep- 
striking roots of the forest terminate far above you, 
looking like a black rim on the enclosing precipices ; 
the bed of the river and its sky-sustaining walls are 
of solid rock, and, with the tremendous descent of 
the stream — forming for miles one continuous suc- 
cession of falls and rapids — the channel is worn into 
curves and cavities which throw the clear waters 
into forms of inconceivable brilliancy and variety. 
It is a sort of half twilight below, with here and 
there a lono- beam of sunshine reachincr down to kiss 
the lip of an eddy, or form a rainbow over a fall, 
and the reverbeiating and changing echoes, 

"Like a ring of bells whose sound the wind still alters," 
maintain a constant and most soothing music, vary- 



ILLUSTRATED. 51 

ing at every step with the vaiying phase of the cur- 
rent. Cascades of from twenty to thirty feet, over 
which the river flies with a single and hurrying leap, 
(not a drop missing from the glassy and bending 
sheet,) occur frequentl}^ as you ascend ; and it is 
from these that the place takes its name. But the 
Falls, though beautiful, are only peculiar from the 
dazzling and unequalled rapidity with which the wa- 
ters come to the leap. If it were not for the leaf 
Avhich drops wavering down into the abysm from 
trees apparently painted on the sky, and which is 
caught away by the flashing current as if the light- 
ning had suddenly crossed it, you would think .the 
vault of the steadfast heavens a flying element as 
soon. The spot in that long gulf of beauty that I 
best remember is a smooth descent of some hundred 
yards, w^here the river in full and undivided volume 
skims over a plane as polished as a table of scaglio- 
la, looking, in its invisible speed, like one mirror of 
gleaming but motionless crystal. Just above, there 
is a sudden turn in the glen, which sends the w^ater 
like a catapult against the opposite angle of the rock, 
and, in the action of years, it has worn out a cavern 
of unknown depth, into which the whole mass of 
the river plunges with the abandonment of a flying 



52 TRENTON FALLS 

fiend into hell, and reappearing like the angel that 
has pursued him, glides swiftly, but with divine se- 
renity, on its way. (I am indebted for that last figure 
to Job, w^ho travelled with a Milton in his pocket, 
and had a natural redolence of " Paradise Lost" in 
his conversation.) 

Much as I detest water in small quantities, (to 
drink,) I have a hydromania in the way of lakes, 
rivers, and waterfalls. It is, by much, the helle in 
the family of the elements. Earth is never tolera- 
ble unless disguised in green. Air is so thin as only 
to be visible when she borrows drapery of water ; 
and Fire is so staringly bright as to be unpleasant 
to the eyesight ; but water ! soft, pure, graceful 
water ! there is no shape into which you can throw 
her that she does not seem lovelier than before. 
She can borrow nothing of her sisters. Earth has 
no jewels in her lap so brilliant as her own spray- 
pearls and emeralds ; Fire has no rubies like what 
she steals from the sunset ; Air has no robes like 
tlie grace of her fine-woven and ever-changing dra- 
pery of silver. A health (in wine !) to Water ! 

Who is there that did not love some stream in his 
youth ? Who is there in whose vision of the past 
tliere does not sparkle up, from every picture of 



ILLUSTRATED. 



53 



childhood, a spring or a rivulet woven through the 
darkened and torn woof of first affections like a 
thread of unchanged silver ? How do you interpret 
the instinctive yearning with which you search for 
the river-side or the fountain in every scene of na- 
ture — the clinging unaware to the river's course 
when a truant in the fields in 
June — the dull void you find in 
every landscape of which it is 
not the ornament and the cen- 
tre ? For myself, I hold with 
the Greek : " Water is the first 
principle of all things : we were 
made from it, and we shall be 
resolved into it," 





64 



TRENTON FALLS 




F subsequent visits to this loveliest 
of spots, years after, the following 
extracts from letters addressed to 
the author's partner in the editor- 
ship of the Home Journal, give de- 



scription 




— In the long cor- 
° ridor of travel be- 
tween New York and Niaga- 
this place, as you know, is a sort 
of alcove aside — a side-scene out of earshot of the 
crowd — a recess in a window whither you draw a 
friend by the button for the sake of chit-chat at ease. 
It is fifteen miles off at right angles from the gen- 
eral procession, and must be done in vehicle hired 
at Utica for the purpose ; so that, costing more time 
and money than a hundred miles in any other direc- 
tion, it is voted a " don't-pay" by promiscuous trav- 
ellers, and its frequentation sifted accordingly. In 



ILLUSTRATED. 55 

gossiping with you about Trenton, therefore, I shall 
do it with cozy pen, the crowd out of the way, and 
we two snug and confidential. And as poets and 
'' literary men" are never poetical and literary for 
their own amusement, you will expect no " fine- wri- 
ting," and none but a spontaneous mention of the 
moon. 

For the heavy price of two subscribers and a half 
(explained by the editor to mean five dollars) I was 
not driven fast enough hither to clear the dust, met- 
aphorically nor otherwise, I should recommend to 
you, or to any who come after, to include in the 
bargain for a conveyance, the time in which the 
distance is to be done. It is a ride of no particular 
interest. With no intimation whatever of the neigh- 
borhood of the Falls, we were driven up to the edge 
of a wood, after fifteen miles of dust and rough jolt- 
ino-, and landed at a house built for one man's wants 
and belongings — a house which the original forest 
still cloaks and umbrellas, leaving only its front por- 
tico, like a shirt-ruffle, open to the day, and which I 
pray, with all its homely inconveniences, may never 
be supplanted by a hotel of the class entitled to 
keep a gong. Oh, those chalky universes in rural 
places! What mjles around, of green trees and 



56 



TRENTON FALLS 




v--;r^*f'\ tender grass, do they 
'iSv ■ "^^ blaze out of all recoo-ni- 




^<\ 



tion with their unes- i 
'^ .. capable white-paint aggravations of 
- " sunshine, and their stretch of unmiti- 
gated colonnade ! You may as well look at a star 
with a blazing candle in your eye, as enjoy a land- 
scape in which one of these mountains of illuminated 
clapboa]-d sits a-glare. It is the only happy allevia- 
tion of hotels of this degree, that they usually em- 
ploy a band during the summer ; and, for a slight 
consideration, you can hire the use of the long trum- 
pet during the day, and, through it, look at some 
parts of the surrounding scenery with the house 
shut out of the prospect. Is it not a partial legis- 
lation (apropos) that distinguishes between nose and 
eye — protecting the first against any offending nui- 
sance in public places, and leaving the latter and 



ILLUSTRATED. 5*7 

more delicate organ to all tlie dangers of ophthalmia 
by excessive white house.? At Sharon, for exam- 
ple, any man may start Avithout precaution to take 
a walk ; but a man who should turn to come back 
without a pair of green goggles to shield his eyes 
from the glare of the hotel as he approaches it from 
any distance within three miles, must have let in 
less rubbish than I at those two complaining gate- 
ways of the brain, and have less dread of being left 
to the mercy of that merest of all beggars, the ear, 
that can help itself to nothing. There are satirists 
on the look-out for a national foible, and philanthro- 
pists on the look-out for a hobby — will not some one 
of these two classes entitle himself to the gratitude 
of scholars, by writing or preaching down (or in 
some way ''doing brown") the American proiyensity 
for ivliite imint — the excessive use of which, partic- 
ularly in this climate of intense sunshine, is an eye- 
sore to taste as well as to overworked optics ? 

Mr. Moore, the landlord at Trenton, is proposing 
to build a larger house for the accommodation of 
the pubHc, but this sermon upon our Mont Blanc 
Hotels, with their Dover Cliff porticoes, is not aimed 
at him. On subjects of taste he requires no coun- 
sel. The engravings a man hangs up in his parlors 



58 TRENTON FALLS 

are a sufficient key to the degree of his refinement ; 
and those which are visible through the soft demi- 
jour of the apartments in this shaded retreat, might 
all belong to a connoisseur in art, and are a fair ex- 
ponent of the proprietor's perception of the beauti- 
ful. In more than one way he is the right kind of 
man for the Keeper of this loveliest of Nature's 
bailiwicks of scenery. On the night of our arrival 
I was lying awake, somewhere towards midnight, 
and watching from my window the sifting of moon- 
light through the woods with the stirring of the 
night air, when the low undertone of the Falls was 
suddenly varied with a strain of exquisite music. It 
seemed scarcely a tune, but, with the richest fulness 
of volume, one lingering and dreamy note melted 
into another, as if it were the voluntary of a player 
who unconsciously touched the keys as an accompa- 
niment to his melancholy. What with the place 
and time, and my ignorance that there was an in- 
strument of this character in the house, I was a 
good deal surprised ; but before making up my 
mind as to what it could be, I was " helped over 
the stile" into dreamland, and made no inquiry till 
the next morning at breakfast. The player was our 
landlord, Mr. Moore, who, thus, when his guests are 



ILLUSTRATED. 59 

gone to bed, steals an hour of leisure from the 
night, and, upon a fine organ which stands in one 
of the inner parlors of his house, plays with admira- 
ble taste and execution. 

In an introduction of Mr. Moore to you as " mine 
host," however, mention must needs be made of his 
skill in an art meaner than music, yet far more es- 
sential — the art of pie-making and pudding-ry. No- 
where (short of Felix's in the Passage Panorama at 
Paris) will you eat such delicate and curious varie- 
ties of pastry as at the hostelry of romantic Trenton. 
Those fingers that wander over the keys of the sol- 
emn organ with such poetical dreaminess, and turn 
over a zoophyte or trilobite with appreciative cogni- 
zance, (for he is a mineralogist, too, and has col- 
lected a curious cabinet of specimens from the 
gorges of the Falls,) are daily employed in prepar- 
ing, for the promiscuous " sweet tooth" of the pub- 
lic, pies worthy of being confined to Heliogabalus 
and the ladies. The truth is, that, were human 
allotments as nicely apportioned, and placed in as 
respective an each-other-age as the ingredients of 
Mr. Moore's pies, Mr. Moore would never have 
learned the trade of a baker. Happy they, notwith- 
standing, to whom the world says, " Friend, go up 



60 



TRENTON FALLS 



V 



f:> 1 



m^ 




hio-lier !" tlioiio-h in this case it would 
be only in intellectual gradation, 
as the calling of hotel-keeper is, in 
our country, half a magistracy, from 
the importance and responsibility of 
its duties, and one which (by pub- 
lic consent daily strength- 
ening) demands and befits 
Mr. Moore 
(to finish 
his biog- 
,. raphy,) 



a gentleman. 



came here twenty years ago, to enjoy the scenery 
of which he had heard so much ; and, o-ettino- a se- 
vere fall in climbing the rocks, was- for some time 
confined to his bed at the hotel, then kept by Mr. 
Sherman, of trout-fishing memory. The kind care 
with which he was treated resulted in an attachment 
for one of the daughters of the family, his present 
wife ; he came back, wedded his fair nurse and 
Trenton for the remainder of his life, and is now the 



ILLUSTRATED. 



61 



owner and host of the very lovehest scenery-haunt 
in all our picturesque country. 

Of course you are impatient for me and my pen 
to get to the Falls — but that deep-down autopsy of 
Nature, with its disembowellings of strata laid down 
before the time of Adam, (according to Professor 
Agassiz,) is a solemn place and topic, and I must 
talk of such trifles as modern men and their abidincr- 
places, while my theme dates fi*om this side of the 
Deluge. I am not so sure that I shall say any 
thing about the Falls in this letter. Let me see, 
first, what else I have to tell you of the manner of 
life at the Hotel. 

As I said before, the company of strangers at 
Trenton is made somewhat select, by the expense 
and difficulty of access. Most, who come, stay two 
or three days, but there are usually boarders here 
for a longer time ; and, at present, three or four 
families of most cultivated and charming people, 
who form a nucleus of agreeable society to which 
any attractive transient visitor easily attaches an 
acquaintance. Nothing could well be more agreea- 
ble than the footing upon which these chance-met 
residents and their daily accessions of new comers 
pass their evenings and take strolls up the ravine 



62 



TRENTOX FALLS 



together ; and, for those 
who love country air and 
romantic rambles without 
" dressing for dinner," or 
waltzing by a band, this is 
a "place to stay." These 
are not the most numerous fre- 
quenters of Trenton, however. It 
is a very popular place of j 

resort from ev- ^ v - 









rT 




^ -^- 




ery village within thirty miles ; and from ten in 
the morning till four in the afternoon, there is gay 
work with the country-girls and their beaux — swing- 
ino- under the trees, strollino' about in the woods 
near the house, bowling, singing, and dancing — at 
all of which (owing, perhaps, to a certain gipsy-ish 
promiscuosity of my nature that I never could aris- 
tocrify by the keeping of better company) I am 



ILLUSTRATED. 63 

delighted to be at least a looker-on. The average 
number of these visitors from the neighborhood is 
forty or fifty a day, so that breakfast and tea are the 
nearest approach to " dress meals" — the dinner, 
though profuse and dainty in its fare, being eaten in 
what is commonly thought to be rather " mixed so- 
ciety." I am inclined to think that, from French 
intermixture, or some other cause, the inhabitants 
of this region are a little peculiar in their manners. 
There is an unconsciousness or carelessness of others' 
observation and presence, that I have, hitherto, only 
seen abroad. We have had songs, duetts, and cho- 
ruses sung here by village girls, within the last few 
days, in a style that drew all in the house to listen 
very admiringly ; and even the ladies all agree that 
there have been extremely pretty girls, day after 
day, among them. I find they are Fourierites to 
. the extent of common hair-brush and other personal 
furniture — walking into anybody's room in the house 
for the temporary repairs which belles require on 
their travels, and availing themselves of whatever 
was therein, with a simplicity perhaps a little trans- 
cendental. I had obtained the extra privilege, for 
myself, of a small dressing-room apart, in which I 
presumed the various trowsers and other merely 



64 TRENTON FALLS 

masculine belongings would be protective scarecrow 
sufficient to keep out these daily female invaders ; 
but, walking in yesterday, I found my combs and 
brushes in active employ, and two very tidy-looking 
girls making themselves at home without shutting 
the door, and no more disturbed by my entree than 
if I had been a large male fly. As friends were 
waiting, I apologized for intruding long enough to 
take a pair of boots from under their protection, but 
my presence was evidently no interruption. One of 
the girls (a tall figure, like a woman in two sylla- 
bles connected by a hyphen at the waist) continued 
to look "at the back of her dress in the glass, a la 
Venus Callqnge, and the other went on threading 
her most prodigal chevelure with my doubtless very 
embarrassed though unresisting hair-brush, and so 
I abandoned the field, as I was of course expected 
to do. As they did not shut the door after my re- 
treat, I presume that, by the code of morals and 
manners hereabouts, a man's preoccupancy of a 
room simply entitles him to come and go at pleas- 
ure — the unoccupied portions and conveniences of 
the apartment open, meantime, to feminine avail- 
ment and partaking. I do not know that they 
would go the length of " fraternizing" one's tooth- 



ILLUSTRATED. 65 

brush, but, with the exception of locking up that 
rather confidential article, I give in to the customs 
of the country, and have ever since left open door 
to the ladies — which " severe trial" please mention, 
if convenient, in ray biography. 

If you have ever " sung in the choir," my dear 
General, you know how difficult it is to stop before 
the organ leaves off, and, with the sound of running- 
water, which is the eternal accompaniment here, I 
find one keeps doing whatever one is about — drink- 
ing tea or drizzling ink — with pertinacious contin- 
uance. Hence this very long letter. The atmo- 
sphere seems otherwise favorable to writing, how- 
ever, for the front of the house is covered with 
inscriptions of wit and sentiment — and with one spe- 
cimen of each I will make an effort to taper off into 
an adieu. In a neat hand, one gentleman writes, 
alono-side of the front door — 

o 

" Here we are, as you discover^ 
And now we part forever and ever." 

Farther off to the left, between two blinds, a man 
records the arrival of himself " and servant,''^ below 
which is the following inscription : 

" Gr. Squires, wife, and two babies. N'o servant, 
owino- to the hardness of the times." 



66 



TRENTON FALLS 



And under this, again : 

" G. W. Douglas and servant. No wife and ba- 
bies, owing to the hardness of the times." 

With this instructive example of selective econo- 
my, I call your admiring attention to the forbear- 
ingly practical character of this letter, written at 
Trenton and in the full of the moon, and remain, my 
dear Morris, 

Yours, <fcc. 



•X- * * * * 




NE of the most embaiTassing of di- 
P' lemmas, my dear Morris, in address- 
ing either talk or letter to a man, is 
not to know the amount of his infor- 
mation on the subject in hand. I 
am to write to you from Trenton — a 
place of romantic scenery and gay 
resort, and easy enough to gossip 
about, if that were all. But it is, 
besides, the spot where prostrate Mother Earth has 
been cleft open, to the spine, more neatly than any- 



ILLUSTRATED. 



67 



■M'i^^'^^ 








where else, and where the 
N ^ ^ ''-v^nS^^'^S deposits on the edges of 
^^"^ her ribs show what she 

" liad to digest, for centuries before 
the creation of man. Here I am, 
therefore, in this shirt-sleeve sum- 
mer noon — as full of wonder and of 
impresbions of beauty as my poor brain- 
jug can any way hold without spilling — but, query 
before I pour out : — how much knowledge of the 
spot have you drank already, and do you want the 
dregs at the bottom, or only the bubble at the brim ? 
At what definite point of time (within a century or 
so) shall we take up the news of this watering- 
place, whose book of arrivals (legible at this mo- 
ment by the geologist) extends back to, certainly, 
long before the planting of the forbidden tree, and, 
possibly, to a date anterior to the fall of Lucifer ? 
America (Agassiz and other men of science now 
agree) was stocked and planted long before the 
emergence of Europe and Asia from the bed of the 



68 TRENTON FALLS 

ocean. It was an old continent when Eden first 
came to light ; and if Adam's early education had 
not been neglected, he would probably have made 
the tour of the United States, [then "the old coun- 
try,") and taken Trenton in his way. Now, my 
Morris, where shall we strike in, to the long line of 
customers at this pleasant place ? Shall I lalk to 
you of the trilobites and zoophytes who came here 
a quarter of an eternity ago, or of the French baron 
and the son of an EngHsh statesman, who arrived 
here to-day, Aug. 10, 1848 ? Will you have Tren- 
ton shown up in Adam and Eve's time, or in the 
time of Baron de Trobriand and Mr. Stanley ? Of 
this long-estabhshed theatre of Nature, shall I para- 
graph the " stock company" or the " stars ?" — the 
fossil remains of time out of mind, or the belles and 
beaux who, at this particular moment of forever and 
ever, are flirting away the noon upon the portico ? 
If we could " vote in" our own fossil representatives, 
by the way — choose the specimens of our race, I 
mean, who are to be dug out and admired in future 
ages — there is a bride among the company below, 
whose election would, I think, be unanimous, and 
whose form (if petrified in marble without a flaw, 
and brouo-ht to light a thousand years hence as a 



ILLUSTRATED. 69 

zoolite of the eighteenth century) would assuredly 
make those unborn geologists sigh not to have lived 

in our days of woman. She is indeed a ch 

but for further particulars see postscript. 

I was here twenty years ago, but the fairest things 
slip easiest out of the memory, and I had half for- 
gotten Trenton. To tell the truth, I was a little 
ashamed to compare the faded and shabby picture 
of it in my mind with the reality before me ; and if 
the waters of the Falls had been, by any likelihood, 
the same that flowed over when I was here be- 
fore, I should have looked them in the face, I think, 
with something of the embarrassment with which 
one meets, half-rememberingly, after years of sepa- 
ration, the ladies one has vowed to love forever. 
How is it with you, my dear Morris? Have you, 
as a general thing, been constant to waterfalls, &c., 
(fee, (fee. ? 

The peculiarity of Trenton Falls, I fancy, consists 
a good deal in the space in which you are compelled 
to see them. You walk a few steps from the hotel, 
throuo'h the wood, and come to a descendino^ stair- 
case of a hundred steps, the different bends of which 
are so overgrown with wild shrubbery, that you 
cannot see the ravine till you are fairly down upon 



70 TRENTON FALLS 

its rocky floor. Your patli hence, up to the first 
Fall, is alono: a ledo-e cut out of the base of the cliff 
that overhangs the torrent ; and when you get to 
the foot of the descending sheet, you find yourself 
in very close quarters with a cataract — rocky walls 
all round you — and the appreciation of power and 
magnitude, perhaps, somewhat heightened by the 
confinement of the place — as a man would have a 
mucii more realizing sense of a live lion, shut up 
with him in a basement parlor, than he would of the 
same object seen from an elevated and distant point 
of view. 

The usual walk (through this deep cave open at 
the top) is about half a mile in length, and its al- 
most subterranean river, in that distance, plunges 
over four precipices in exceedingly beautiful cas- 
cades. On the successive rocky terraces between 
the Falls, the torrent takes every variety of rapids 
and whirlpools ; and, perhaps, in all the scenery of 
the world, there is no river, which, in the same 
space, presents so many of the various shapes and 
beauties of running and falling water. The Indian 
name of the stream (the Kanata, which means the 
amber river) expresses one of its peculiarities, and, 
probably from the depth of shade cast by the two 



ILLUSTRATED. 7I 

dark and overhanging walls 'twixt which it flows, 
the water is everj^where of a peculiarly rich lustre 
and color, and, in the edges of one or two of the 
cascades, as yellow as gold. Artists, in drawing this 
river, fail, somehow, in giving the impression of deep- 
down-itude which is produced by the close approach 
of the two lofty walls of rock, capped by the over- 
leaning woods, and with the sky apparently resting, 
like a ceiling, upon the leafy architraves. It con- 
veys, somehow, the effect of a sz^6^(?r-natural river — 
on a different level, altogether, from our common 
and above-ground water-courses. If there were 
truly, as the poets say figuratively, " worlds within 
worlds," this would look as if an earthquake had 
cracked open the outer globe, and exposed, through 
the yawning fissure, one of the rivers of the globe 
below — the usual under-ground level of " down 
among the dead men" being, as you walk upon its 
banks, between you and the daylight. 

Considering the amount of surprise and pleasure 
which one feels in a walk up the ravine at Trenton, 
it is remarkable how little one finds to say about it, 
the day after. Is it that mere scenery, without his- 
tory, is enjoyable without being suggestive, or, amid 
the tumult of the rushino^ torrent at one's feet, is the 



72 TRENTON FALLS 

milk of tliouo;lit too much ao-itated for the cream to 
rise ? I fancied yesterday, as I rested on the soft- 
est rock I could find at the upper end of the ra\^ne, 
that I should tumble you out a letter to-day, with 
the ideas pitching forth like saw-logs over a water- 
fall ; but my memory has nothing in it to-day but 
the rocks and rapids it took in — the talent wrapped 
in its napkin of delight remaining in unimproved 
statu-quo-sitj. One certainly gets the impression, 
while the sio-ht and hearino- are so overwhelmed, 
that one's mind is famously at work, and that we 
shall hear from it to-morrow ; but it is Jean Paul, I 
think, who says that "the mill makes the most 
noise when there is no grist in the hopper." I have 
a couple more days to stay here, however, and, 
meantime, I will leave these first impressions in in- 
cubation. Look for one more letter from Trenton, 
therefore, for Avhich I will borrow an hour or two on 
the morning of leaving. 



•^^^^^km^^^if: 




^^2:^. 



ILLUSTRATED. 




1TlTTill|HAT very "American swallow," 
- Avhich, the zoologists tell us, " de- 
vours fifteen hundred caterpillars a 
week, and performs every action on 
the ^^ ing except incubation and sleeping," 
should establish a depot for the sale of 
his feathers — for with the quill of no 
slower bird can a man comfortably write, in the act 
of mental digestion and during bodily travel. If 
you find my style jerk-y and abrupt, and my ad- 
joining chambers of thought, as they say in conch- 
ology, without " the connecting siphuncle" which 
should make the transition as velvet-y to the read- 
er's foot as the carpet from a boudoir to a lady's 
chamber, let the defects rather make you wonder 
that I wrote at all than that I wrote no better. To 
feel, and tell of it while you feel, is, (besides,) as 
lovers and writers alike know, very difficult busi- 
ness — notwithstanding Shakspeare's doctrine that 
" every time serves for the matter that is then born 
in it." And so for another of those fatal too-quick- 



74 " TRENTON FALLS 

Ities, for all manner of which, it seems to me, life is 
full of irresistible inducement. 

It is not often, my dear Morris, that we have 
found occasion to complain of woman's performance 
of her part as the sex ornamental. In most times 
and places, she refreshingly varies the dulness of 
the picture of life, dressing for her place as appro- 
priately as do the lilies and roses, and deserving, 
like them, (of com'se,) to toil not, neither should she 
spin. To be ornamental is to be useful enough. 
Charmingly as women become most situations in 
which we see them, however, they, by the present 
fashion, dress most tamely for the places where 
stiiking costume is most needed. I felt this quite 
sensibly yesterday. From my seat under a tree, 
where I dreamed away the delicious summer fore- 
noon, I had the range of the ravine ; and everybody 
who passed through made part of my landscape, 
for, at least, half an hour of their climbings and 
baitings. You know how much any romantic scene 
is heightened in its effect by human figures. Every 
new group changed and embellished the glorious 
combination of rock, foliage, and water below me, 
and I studied their dresses and attitudes as you 
would criticise them in a picture. The men, with 



ILLUSTRATED. 



75 









their two sticks of legs, and 




angular hats, looked abominably, of 
course. I was glad when they were 
out of the perspective. But the ladies 
of each party, with their flowing skirts, 
veils lifted by the wind, picturesque 
bonnets and parasols, were charming 
outlines as heighteners to the effect, and 
would have been all that was wanted 
to render it perfect — only that 
they were clad in the colors of 
the rock behind them — in slate- 
colored riding-dresses, without a 
single exception, 
and in bonnets and 



1- 



s\ 




76 TRENTON FALLS 

ribbons adapted, Avitli the same economy, to the 
dust of the road. In the course of the morning, 
one hidy came along, apparently an invalid, resting 
at every spot where she could find a seat, and for 
her use, the gentleman Avho was with her carried a 
crimson sTiaivl, flung over his shoulder. You would 
need to be an artist to understand how much that 
one shawl embellished the scene. It concentrated 
the light of the whole ravine, and though there were 
parties of pretty girls above and below, and new- 
comers every two or three minutes, I found my eye 
fastened to this red shawl and its immediate neigh- 
borhood, during the whole time of its remaining 
within view, I made as vigorous a vow as the 
heavenly languor of the atmosphere would sustain, 
to address, through the Home Journal, an appeal to 
the ladies of our land of beauty, imploring them to 
carry, at least, a scarf over the arm, white, red, or 
blue, when they mingle in the landscapes of our 
romantic resorts — thus supplying all that is wanted 
to such glorious pictures as Trenton and Niagara ; 
while, at the same time, they thus, artistically as 
well as justly, become the luminous centre to which 
the remainder of the scene is entirely subservient. 
Do you not see, Morris, that if a lady in a blue 



ILLUSTRATED. 'j'y 

travelling-habit had chanced to have passed up the 
ravine during my look-out from this point of per- 
spective, Trenton Falls would have seemed to me to 
be only an enhancement of her figure and appear- 
ance — secondary altogether to her primary and con- 
centrating impression on the eye ? Ladies should 
avail themselves of such opportunities, even at some 
more pains and expense ; for, of all the chance ob- 
stacles to appreciation of female beauty or style, the 
want of suitable background and surroundings is 
the most frequent and effectual. 

And, a2V'0])os of seeing fine things to advantage, 
why could not t/ou, my fine Brigadier, give us a 
tableaux vivant at Trenton — ordering some of your 
companies of red-coats to campaign it for a week at 
the Falls, and let us see how the "war of waters" 
would look, thundering down upon the rocks amid 
flags and unifoi-ms ? Why, it would be one of the 
most brilliant shows possible to contrive — a putting 
of Nature into holiday costume, as it were ; and I 
scarce know which would more embellish the other, 
brigade or cataract. On the platform above each 
of the four Falls there is room enough to encamp 
two or three companies in tents ; and, fancy looking 
down the gorge from the summit of the cliffs above, 



78 TRENTOX FALLS 

and seeing these successive terraces, with waterfall 
and military array, precipices and wild forest, in 
picturesque and magnificent combination ! The fact 
is, my sodger, that the usual habiliments of mankind 
are made to harmonize with brick walls and dirty 
streets, and when we come into Nature's gorgeous 
palaces of scenery, looking the " forked radishes" 
that we are, there is no resisting the conviction that 
we are either wofully out of place, or not dressed 
with suitable regard to the local pomp and circum- 
stance. Suggest to our friend Beebe to invent, at 
least, a sombrero, and advertise it as the thing which 
etiquette requires should be worn at Niagara and 
Trenton, instead of a hat with petty rim. There 
would be an obvious propriety in the fashion. Where 
Nature appears in her waterfall epaulettes, armor 
of rocks, and dancing plumes of foliage, surely there 
should be some manner of corresponding toggery 
wherewith to wait upon her. 

We have had the full of the moon and a cloudless 
sky for the last two or three nights, and of course 
we have walked the ravine till the " small hours," 
seeino- w^ith wonder the transformino- effects of moon- 
light and its black shadows on the Falls and preci- 
pices, I have no idea (you will be glad to know) 



ILLUSTRATED. *79 

of trying to reproduce these sublimities on paper — 
at least not with my travelling stock of verbs and 
adjectives. To "sandwich the moon in a muffin," 
one must have time and a ladder of dictionaries. 
But one or two effects struck me which perhaps are 
worth briefly naming, and I will throw into the lot 
a poetical figure, which you may use in your next 
song — giving credit to your " distinguished fellow- 
citizen," the Moon, for the original suggestion. 

The fourth Fall (or the one which is flanked by 
the ruins of a saw-mill) is perhaps a hundred feet 
across ; and its curve over the upper rock and its 
break upon the lower one, form two parallel lines, 
the water everywhere falling the same distance with 
the evenness of an artificial cascade. The stream 
not being very full just now, it came over, in twenty 
or thirty places, thicker than elsewhere ; and the 
effect, from a distance, as the moonlight lay full 
upon it, was that of twenty or thirty immovable 
marble columns, connected by transparent curtains 
of falling lace, and with bases in imitation of foam. 
Now it struck me that this might suggest a new and 
fanciful order of architecture, suitable at least to 
the structure of green-houses, the glass roofs of 
which are curved over and slope to the ground with 



80 TRENTON FALLS 

very much the contour of a waterfall. Please men- 
tion this to Downing, the next time you meet him 
on board the Thomas Powell, and he'll mention it 
(for tlie use of some happy, extravagant dog, who 
can afford a whim or so) in his next book on Rural 
Architecture. 

Subterranean as this foaming river looks by day, 
it looks like a river in cloud-land by night. The 
side of the ravine which is in shadow, is one undis- 
tinguishable mass of black, with its wavy upper edge 
in strong relief against the sky, and, as the foaming 
stream catches the light from the opposite and moon- 
lit side, it is outlined distinctly on its bed of dark- 
ness, and seems winding its way between hills of 
clouds, half black, half luminous. Below, wdiere all 
is deep shadow except the river, you might fancy it 
a silver mine laid open to your view amid subterra- 
nean darkness by the wand of an enchanter, or (if 
you prefer a military trope, my dear General) a 
long white plume laid lengthwise between the ridges 
of a cocked hat. 

And now — for the poetical similitude I promised 
you — please put yourself opposite the biggest cat- 
aract of all, the lowest one, where the whole body 
of the river is forced into the narrowing approach to 



ILLUSTRATED. gj 

a precipice, and pitches into the foamy gulf below, 
like the overthrow of Lucifer and his hosts. From 
one cause and another, this is the angriest downfall 
of waters possible ; and the rock, over which it 
tumbles, here makes a curve, and comes round witli 
a battlemented projection, looking the cataract full 
in the face. As we stood gazing at this, last night, 
a little after midnight, the moon threw the shadow 
of the rock, slantwise, across the face of the Fall. 
I found myself insensibly watching to see whether 
the delicate outline of this shadow would not vary. 
There it lay, still as the shade of a church-window 
across a marble slab on the wall, drawing its fine 
line over the most phrensied tumult of the lashed 
and agonized waters, and dividing whatever leaped 
across it, foam, spray, or driving mist, with invaria- 
ble truthfulness to the rock that lay behind. Now, 
my song-maker, if you ever have a great man to 
make famous— a hero who unflinchingly represents 
a great principle amid the raging opposition, hatred, 
and malice of mankind— there is your similitude ! 
Calm as the shadotv of a rock across the foam of a 
caterac^, would be a neat thing to "salt down" for 
Calhoun or Van Buren— (whichever holds out best 
or first wants it)— and it would go off, in one of 



82 TRENTON FALLS 

your speeches, like a Paixlian u-un. I tied a knot 
in the end of m}^ cravat, standing at the Fall, to re- 
member it for you. 

Baron -de Trobriand has been here for the last day 
or two. as I mentioned in my last letter. I had 
been reading, on the road, a French novel, of which 
he is the author, (" Lcs Gent'ils Iwmmes de V Oiicst,'") 
and I am amused to see how he carries out, in his 
impulsive and enthusiastic way of enjoying scenery, 
the impression you get of his character fi-om his 
buovant and brilliant style of writing. We have 
not seen him at a meal since he has been here. 
After one look at the Falls, he came back and made 
a foray upon the larder, got a tin kettle in which he 
packed the simple provender he might want, and 
was off with his portfolio to sketch and ramble out 
the day, impatient alike of the restraints of meals or 
companions. He returns at night with his slight 
and elegant features burnt with the sun, wet to the 
knees with wading the rapids, and quite overdone 
with fatigue, and rejoins the gay but more leisurely 
and luxurious party with which he travels. Look- 
ing down from one of the cliffs yesterday afternoon, 
I saw him hard at work, ankle-deep in water, bring- 
ing pieces of rock and building a causeway across 



ILLUSTRATED. 



83 



the sliallows of the stream, to induce the ladies to 
come to the edge of the Falls, otherwise inaccessible. 
He has made one or two charming sketches of the 
ravine, being, as you know, an admirable artist. 
There is an infusion of joyousness' and impulse, as 
well as of genius, in the noble blood of this gentle- 
man who has come to live among n.s ; and I trust 
that, with the increase of our already large French 
population, he will think it Avorth 
,^ while to graft himself on our pe- 

riodical literature, and give it an 
effervescence that it needs. You 
remember his gay critiques of the 
Opera last winter. 

I meant to have described 

, _ to you the path through the 

"^ ^^ forest, along the edge of the 

cliff" overhanging 

''- - '-, the ravine — its 





S4 TRENTON FALLS 

beauty by moonlight, vrith its fire-fly lamps and lo- 
cust hymns — the lunar rainbow visible from one of 
its eyries — and other stuff for poetry with which I 
mentally filled my pockets in strolling about ; but 
ni}^ letter is long, and I have still an addition to 
make to it, for the use of visitors to Trenton. Chan- 
cing to have taken with me a new Poem, " Niagara," 
by Rev. C. H. A. Bulkley, I found ''my sentiments 
better expressed" in some of his thoughts about 
water-courses, and as other people may hke to have 
their thinking done for them, as well as I, I simply 
copy them out, and so end my letter. He is a man 
of thought, as you see, by the way, and 
the book is worth reading throughout. "i 

See postscript, and believe me. 
Yours, &c., 



^ ^ 



a 






ILLUSTRATED. 85 

P. S. — Thus speculates Mr. Bulkley : — • 

L\ thy hoarse strains is heard the desohxte wail 

Of streams unnumbered wandering far away 

From mountain homes, where, 'neath the shady rocks, 

Their parent springs gave them a jDeaceful birth ; 

In one united voice their grief resounds, 

Mourning the loss of pensive woods and vales, 

No more to greet their musical return ; 

Downward, clasped tremblingly in wikl embrace. 

They lieadlong plunge and writhe in agony. 

Upward tlieir deep groan goes to hill and glen, 

Till, mingled in despair, seaward they roll. 

To swell tlie caves of Ocean never full, 

Repeating loudly all along his shore, 

In the sad meanings of the heaving surf, 

Like this, the anguish of their ebbing life : 

" Oh, wood-crowned hills ! in whose cool grottoes born, 

We leaped to liglit with chimes of early spring, 

And down your deep ravines and shady sides. 

Flowed witli the music of the youthful heart ; 

We long,. with outstretched amis and mournful plaint, 

To mount your heiglits again, and play in love 

With the green children of tlie forest home ; 

To start in silence from the fissured rock, 

And roll in peace along your verdant cheeks ; 

Oh ! when, ye listening hills, shall we return. 

And bubble up again within your hearts ? 

Ye sun-clad vales ! that slept in light unchecked, 

With visions beauteous as an infant's dream. 



86 TRENTON FALLS 

How joyously along thy banks we played. 

Where yellow moccasins and the wild-rose f^rew, 

Like maidens dancing in the spring-time gay, 

With tinkling feet upon the dewy lawn ! 

Oh, blessed vales ! shall we behold again 

Your peaceful images and. quiet slopes, 

The guardian tenants of your pathless home, 

Or breathe tlie stillness of your fragrant air ? 

Ah ! how we yearn to bend our footsteps back, 

And tread your devious pathways once again ! 

How fiercely, yet, alas ! how vainly now, 

We beat against the stern imprisoning shore, 

That stretches out its everlasting bar, 

Foe to return, defying every siege ! 

Ye wandering spirits of the land-wind, hear ! 

We mourn for you whom oft we joyful bore 

On loving bosoms where your footsteps played ; 

Say, never more shall we in your embrace 

Be held, nor in your unseen presence sport ? 

Come, ye blest breathings of the earth, come now. 

From glen and grove, and waft us back again 

To those sweet phiy-grounds of our infant days. 

Ye mountains ! looking down from star-crowned heights, 

Whose guardian summits watched us in our mirth, 

As parents eye the life-springs of their hearts ; 

Was it not joy for us to dwell beneath 

Your sliadows, resting from the noonday heat ? 

Ay ! it was bliss to cool our sun-struck tide 

Beneath th' umbrageous shelter of your woods ! 



ILLUSTRATED. 87 

To you, to leaf-clad hills, to shining vales, 

Must we now speak that bitter word, ' Farewell ?' 

Must we the strife of fierce leviathans 

Endure, and ever bear th' oppressive weight 

Of hiden barks, that break the yielding wave ? 

jiust we be driven and scourged like heartless slaves, 

l>y the keen lashes of the temj^est's hand, 

Or tremble at the terror of his frown ? 

We would that once again the heated lij) 

Of the lone hunter or the hard-pressed stag, 

Of scliool-boy loosed from Wisdom's serious look. 

Or herds that stood midway within the tide. 

Might draw refreshing life from our cool fonts ; 

We would that some sweet maiden might once more, 

With her reflected image glassed below, 

Smooth her dishevelled lo^^ks her love to meet ; 

Oh ! that again we might in rapture hear 

Those heart-warm words that gushed with new-born hopes, 

And loving promises from blended hearts. 

Repeated in the babblings of our wave ; 

That we might see those fond embraces, full 

Of Life's deep rapture unalloyed and brigljt ! 

We miss the cottage by the emerald bank. 

Where merry voices bubbled with our springs. 

And tones of prayer were heard at vesper-time. 

We see not now the Poet with his book, 

Wrapt in the ecstasy of thought, alone 

And on the grassy slope reclined at length, 

Auun beholding Nature and his page, 



88 TRENTON FALLS 

To form anew from her loved images 
And sentiments of other hearts, combined 
With those begotten in his busy soul, 
A bright creation for the wondering world. 
Ah ! not the least, we miss the errant lad 
With hook and line of rude construction formed, 
And writhing worm to lure the simple trout : 
And the light skip of footless keels that sped 
With flying sail or paddle o'er our tide, 
By mirthful songs or measured shouts well-timed. 
Whither, ah ! whither shall we look to find 
A pathway opened for our backward step ? 
0, Sun I thou only helper in our woe, 
• Come with thy beams and gently draw us up ; 
Let clouds that follow in thy regal train. 
Bend at thy word from their ethereal flight, 
And bear us in their bosoms to our homes. 
Come, ere in anguish, as we beat the beach. 
To drive the sand or break the heartless rock, 
And dig our pathway back again to joy, 
We yield to Ocean's power our ebbing hearts. 
And all despairing die along the shore !" 
Alas ! how vain their cry ! 'tis like tlie prayer 
Of disajjpointed Age that asks for youth ! 
Of souls that rushed down Life's declivities, 
In all the madness of their heated hopes ; 
Man's heart-wrung wishes fall back on our ears. 
Like the deep moanings of returnless streams ! 



ILLUSTRATED. 



7^ 



89 




,^^^\^i(c) ^ conclusion, we regret to say that 
: we can offer neither clue nor guide to 
- . the innumerable thoughts that have 
^ = 4^ been suggested to the glowing imagi- 
i. .c..> ... v.. i.e many remarkable and gifted persons 
who have visited Trenton. The best minds of the 
country have been subjected to these stirring and 
sweet influences, and delicious memories have been 
laid up, with brilliant fancies to keep them company, 
and we know not where to point to these unseen 
but most valuable treasures. Still, they are not 
lost. Bright visions of scenery, and the deep 
thoughts they awaken, are always well turned to 
account. Some are used in oratory and some in 
poetry, some in the pulpit and some in love, some 
in books and some to make homes happy — and so, 
Trenton influences are distributed and do good, even 
though we cannot trace them from where they 
spring. — But still, it is interesting to know who has 
been here — and particularly, what celebrities, that 



90 TRENTON FALLS 

have since passed aAvay— and how the Falls impressed 
them, and what they chanced to express. Of these 
points of interest, Mr. Moore's memory is a store- 
house ; and though we have in vain urged him to 
make a record of his mementoes of the distinguished 
guests he has incidentally mentioned to us, ^^ he is 
a walking suppression of a deligjitful volume of 
souvenirs of Trenton and its visitors. We hope he 
may yet give it to piint. 

With the new plank road, the enlargements and 
improvements of the Hotel, and Mr. Moore, the pro- 
prietor's, long-cherished interest in the place, Tren- 
ton Falls have now become quite the most delight- 
ful of the romantic resorts of the country, and there 
is certainly no spot where so many advantages are 
offered to the lovers of seclusion and nature. 

'' Among otliers,C]Kumuio-. EishopIIobart, De Witt Clinton 
John (iuiney Adams. ( 1,nn,rllnr Kent, Judge Storv, Dr. Sam- 
uel Mitchell, Edmund Jveaiu and Joseph Bonaparte. 



PKIXCIPAL ILLUSTKATIOXS. 



^IIKRMAN FALL FrovH.piccc. 

VILLAGE FALL p^^^ j, 

HIGH FALLS, ) 

Front view, \ 20 

HIGH FALLS, 

Looking down the ravin 

CASCADE OF THE ALHAMBRA 04 

VIEW FROM CARMICHAEl's POINT, OF UPPER PART OF HIGH 

FALL, THE JI ILL-DAM FALL IN THE DISTANCE. .- 30 

SCENE NEAR THE ROCKY HEART _ 34 

MILL-DAM FALL ~o 

■ to 

HOTEL (tVEST WINg) pQ 



f^ 



H22 7^ 



"ov* .""^a- •^'^o^ -.^m/' -ov* 




